Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly But, for their virtue only is their show, And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, Not marble, not the gilded monuments tents Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish When wasteful war shall statues overturn, They contrast remarkably with the tone of the 32nd Sonnet, "These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover." Meres has a passage: "As Ovid saith of his works 'Jamque opus exegi quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas ;' and as Horace saith of his, &c. ; 'Exegi monumentum ære perenniu so say I severally of Sir Philip Sidney's, Spenser's, Daniel's, Drayton's, Shakespeare's, and Warner's works." What Ovid and Horace said is imitated in the 55th Sonnet. But we greatly doubt if what Meres would have said of Shakspere he would have said of himself, except in some assumed character, to which we have not the key. Ben Jonson, to whom a boastful spirit has with some justice been objected, never said anything so strong of his own writings; and he wrote with too much reliance, in this and other particulars, upon classical examples. Jonson was not a writer of Sonnets, which, pitched in an artificial key, made this boastful tone a constituent part of the whole per-55.formance. The man, who never once speaks of his own merits in his dramas, the greatest The living record of your memory. Even in the eyes of all posterity Wherever we meet with these magnificent promises of the immortality which the poet's "Not marble, not the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme." But productions of the human intellect, when he put on the imaginary character in which a poet is weaving a fiction out of his supposed form himself to the practice of other masters personal relations, did not hesitate to conof the art. Shakspere here adopted the tone which Spenser, Daniel, and Drayton had adopted. The parallel appears to us very remarkable; and we must beg the indulgence of our readers while we present them a few passages from each of these writers. And first of Spenser. His 27th Sonnet will furnish an adequate notion of the general tone of his 'Amoretti,' and of the self-exaltation which appears to belong to this species of poem : "Fair Proud! now tell me, why should fair be Sith all world's glory is but dross unclean, That goodly idol, now so gay beseen, And the 69th Sonnet is still more like the model upon which Shakspere formed his 55th: "The famous warriors of the antique world That may admire such world's rare wonder- The happy purchase of my glorious spoil, Gotten at last with labour and long toil." Spenser's 75th Sonnet also thus closes: "My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew." Of Daniel's Sonnets, the 41st and 42nd furnish examples of the same tone, though somewhat more subdued than in Shakspere or Spenser : "Be not displeas'd that these my papers should Bewray unto the world how fair thou art; Or that my wits have show'd the best they could. (The chastest flame that ever warmed heart!) Think not, sweet Delia, this shall be thy shame, My muse should sound thy praise with mournful warble; How many live, the glory of whose name Shall rest in ice, when thine is grav'd in marble! Thou mayst in after ages live esteem'd, Unburied in these lines, reserv'd in pureness; These shall entomb those eyes, that have redeem'd Me from the vulgar, thee from all obscureness. Although my careful accents never mov'd thee, Yet count it no disgrace that I have lov'd thee." To check the world; how they entomb'd have lien Within themselves, and on them ploughs have Yet never found that barbarous hand attain'd And therefore grieve not if thy beauties die; And must enstar the needle and the rail. Lives in my lines, and must eternal be." But Drayton, if he display not the energy of Shakspere, the fancy of Spenser, or the sweetness of Daniel, is not behind either in the extravagance of his admiration or his confidence in his own power. The 6th and the 44th 'Ideas' are sufficient examples:"How many paltry, foolish, painted things, That now in coaches trouble every street, Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings, Ere they be well wrapp'd in their windingsheet ! When I to thee eternity shall give, To have seen thee, their sex's only glory: "Whilst thus my pen strives to eternize thee, And murther'st virtue with thy coy disdain; And though in youth my youth untimely perish, To keep thee from oblivion and the grave, Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish, Where I entomb'd my better part shall save; And though this earthly body fade and die, My name shall mount upon eternity." We now proceed to what another appears continuous poem amongst Shakspere's Sonnets, addressed to the same object as the first nineteen stanzas were addressed to, and devoted to the same admiration of his personal beauty. The leading idea is now that of the spoils of Time, to be repaired only by the immortality of verse: Where art thou, Muse, that thou forgett'st so long To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song, Darkening thy power, to lend base subjects light? Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem If Time have any wrinkle graven there; And make Time's spoils despised everywhere. Give my love fame, faster than Time wastes life; So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.-100. O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends, Excuse not silence so; for it lies in thee Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how To make him seem long hence as he shows now.-101. My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear; That love is merchandis'd whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays; As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, And stops his pipe in growth of riper days: Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burthens every bough, And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue, Because I would not dull you with my song. -102. Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, Your own glass shows you when you look in it.-103. To me, fair friend, you never can be old, Have from the forest shook three summers pride; Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd, In process of the seasons have I seen, Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green. Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd. For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred, Ere you were born, was beauty's summer dead.-104. Let not my love be call'd idolatry, Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Fair, kind, and true, have often liv'd alone, Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.-105. When in the chronicle of wasted time For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.-106. Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme, tribes. And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.-107. What's in the brain that ink may character, Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit? What's new to speak, what now to register, That may express my love, or thy dear merit? Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine, I must each day say o'er the very same; Finding the first conceit of love there bred, If there be nothing new, but that which is To this composed wonder of your frame; O sure I am, the wits of former days To subjects worse have given admiring praise.-59. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. -60. Of these eleven stanzas nine are consecutive in the original, being numbered 100 to 108. The other two, the 59th and 60th, are certainly isolated in the first arrangement; but the idea of the 108th glides into the 59th, and closes appropriately with the 60th. But there is a short poem which stands completely alone in the original edition, the 126th; and it is remarkable for being of a different metrical character, wanting the distinguishing feature of the Sonnet in its number of lines. Its general tendency, however, connects it with those which we have just given : O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st ! If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure; treasure: Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be, And her quietus is to render thee.-126. There is an enemy as potent as Time, who cuts down the pride of youth as the flower of the field. That enemy is Death; and the poet most skilfully presents the images of mortality to his "lovely boy" in connexion with the decay of the elder friend. In this portion of the poem there is a touching simplicity, which, however, is intermingled with passages which, denoting that the Poet is still speaking in character, take the stanzas, in some degree, out of the range of the real: My glass shall not persuade me I am old, Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain; Thou gav 'st me thine, not to give back again.-22. Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye, "T is thee (myself) that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days. -62. Against my love shall be, as I am now, With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn; When hours have drain'd his blood, and fill'd his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night; His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them, still green.-63. When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd, |